Larry Parks, a 17-year-old Black male, was walking in Wilmington on the afternoon of January 21, 2012, when gunfire shattered the quiet on the 300 block of New Castle Avenue. Officers responding around 3:54 p.m. found him in the street with a gunshot wound to the chest; paramedics rushed him to Christiana Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Parks lived in Bear and was a tenth-grade student at Pencader Charter High School, where counselors and classmates soon gathered to grieve.
In the days that followed, family members and investigators pointed to an argument that had spilled from social media into real life. Parks’ father said the trouble had brewed on Facebook, a back-and-forth of words that never felt like a real threat until it was too late. The police case moved quickly: within days, 17-year-old Deshawn Dorsett turned himself in to Wilmington police and was charged with first-degree murder and multiple weapons offenses.
The courtroom chapter came the next summer. On July 9, 2013, eighteen-year-old Dashawn Dorsett pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Parks’ killing. Prosecutors told reporters the youth had been caught in a days-long dispute on Twitter and via text messages over a girl, a digital feud that ended with a fatal shot on a city street.
